Currently, there is a desire for safeguards in the medical industry to prevent the delivery of erroneous medications and doses to patients. Unfortunately, errors in the administration of medications can result in patient injury or fatality, and are often the result of preventable human error. Even though a patient may fully recover from the delivery of an erroneous medication, the injuries sustained and the recuperation could have staggering patient costs due to prolonged hospital stays.
One factor in the inadvertent delivery of erroneous medication is the interchangeability and compatibility of standard universal medical connectors and infusion/injection devices. Many medical connectors and infusion/injection devices are universal couplers that are designed to mate with and accept most syringes and fluid delivering devices.
Because of this interchangeability, errors can be made in interconnecting needleless syringes, catheters, infusion bags, infusion pumps, tubing, intravenous ports, vials, and other drug delivery components. For example, misconnection errors can involve enteral feeding tubes and intravenous catheters. Enteral feeding tubes are used to administer liquid nutritional solutions and medications directly to a patient's gastrointestinal system. In contrast, intravenous catheters are used to administer medications and the like directly to a patient's vascular system. Patients may be harmed if feeding solutions are administered intravenously and vice versa.
Moreover, contemporary medical vials generally provide unobstructed access to any syringe for the withdrawal of medicament. Often, drugs or medicament are available in multiple concentrations in medical vials. Medical delivery problems can arise when a syringe with scale markings designed for a higher concentration of a particular drug is inadvertently used to withdraw a lower concentration version of the drug from the vial, or vice versa, leading to the dangerous prospect of administrating an improper dosage to the patient.
The contemporary medical equipment also lacks a device that helps facilitate the withdrawal of medication from a vial. Typically, vials are manufactured with sealing caps that have to be manually pried off the vials by a health care provider or user prior to use. Some individuals may lack the manual dexterity required to pry off the sealing cap and therefore, may encounter great difficulty in opening such sealing caps.
Additionally, to accommodate such limited-dexterity users, manufacturers typically have to manufacture longer syringe needles to allow these individuals to reliably gain access to the medicine contained within the vial. For example, the longer syringe needles can be required if the syringe needle penetrates the vial septum off-center, or if the syringe needle penetrates the vial septum in a direction that is not substantially perpendicular to the vial septum.
Accordingly, there is a need for a safety device that safeguards against improper fluid path connections between medical components, particularly between a syringe and a drug or other medicament vial. Also, there is a need for a device to help a health care provider or other user withdraw medication from a vial.
Similarly, there exists a need for a drug vial safety device that restricts unintended and improper syringe access to a drug or medicament vial.
There also exists a need for fixedly attaching a drug vial safety device to the neck of a vial during packaging of the vial, to prevent drug delivery errors.
Finally, there exists a need for the fixedly attached drug vial safety device to help facilitate user removal of a vial cap and ensure proper positioning of a syringe needle to reliably gain access to the medicament contained within the vial.